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tylercoates:

Carrie Brownstein on the evolution of rock music in the past decade:

I remember going to Coachella and playing songs from our album The Woods. The tunes on that record were abrasive and scary, full of imbalance and uncertainty. But instead playing rock that day, I felt like we were throwing them. Rock music should be unapologetic, but looking out at the audience, I wanted to hand out earplugs and say, “I’m so sorry.”

Then I saw Sufjan Stevens. I had yet to hear his album, Illinois, but I knew change was in the air. I saw Stevens at the Aladdin Theatre in Portland. The show was sold out; the crowd hung on his very word, laughed, held hands, felt okay about the world. His songs were literary, beautiful and melodic. He filled the stage with costumes, kitsch, cuteness and warmth. There was a lot of wit and heart to Stevens’ music, but no bite. Yet toothlessness was where we seemed to be headed in indie rock; a soft, safe gumminess.

What followed — at least in the world of indie music (and I use the term “indie” loosely and for lack of a better term) — was the rise in popularity of mostly bearded men making very sensitive music: Fleet Foxes, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, Devendra Banhart, Beirut, Girls, Grizzly Bear, The Dodos, Iron & Wine, and so forth and so on.

Women in indie rock were for the most part right there with them. Though beardless, from Feist to Regina Spektor, the trend was to assuage.

Though I enjoyed many a song by all of the aforementioned artists, the terms I’d use to describe their music are ones I wouldn’t wish on my enemies: pleasant and nice.

I remember that Coachella show. I saw it from far away, probably while eating a plate of organic rice, vegetables, and tofu, and, in doing so, somehow unintentionally in this era of introspective pleasantness that she paints with overly broad beardstrokes. I like a lot of that music, the clean shaven column (Beirut, Bird, Stevens, Dodos)  more than the more hirsute bunch if we’re keeping track, and think that her criticisms of its toothlessness is not entirely accurate [ed: in fairness, she develops the argument further in the full article]. But, that said, there’s room for both and no apologies are needed for that loud, heard-it-across-the-polo-field and still-felt-the-pummeling performance.